Day: February 16, 2021

Updated at 2:52 p.m. on Feb. 17 to add the Interior Ministry’s statement. Russian security forces have taught Siberian schoolchildren how to detain protesters in a simulated riot, according to video published by local television Tuesday.  The footage comes on the heels of a mass protest crackdown during rallies calling for jailed opposition leader Alexei…

Iran’s armed forces on Tuesday launched a joint naval drill with Russia in the north of the Indian Ocean designed to “enhance security” of maritime trade, state television reported. The “Maritime Security Belt Exercise” is to cover an area of 17,000 square kilometers and include units from the Iranian army and the elite Revolutionary Guards as well…

A St. Petersburg court has upheld prominent Gulag historian Yury Dmitriyev’s 13-year prison sentence Tuesday in a child sexual abuse case that activists and other prominent figures call politically motivated. Dmitriyev, 65, was due to be released in November 2020 after serving 3.5 years on charges of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, but a court…

The independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper has published new findings into the alleged extrajudicial killings of nearly 30 Chechens in 2017. The newspaper says the new evidence corroborates its 2017 investigation which claimed that Chechen security officials executed 27 of more than 100 people detained in sweeping anti-terror raids in late 2016 and early 2017.  Novaya…

Russia is re-opening its borders to foreign students who show two negative coronavirus tests and arrive from countries with flight resumption agreements in place, authorities said Tuesday. More than 300,000 international students are estimated to have been unable to enter Russia due to the pandemic. Russian universities resumed in-person courses earlier in February after nearly…

Pro-Kremlin spin doctor Vladimir Solovyov has been banned from the Clubhouse app after attempting to start a discussion on LGBT issues in Russia.  The conservative talk show host was banned from the audio-based social media platform Monday shortly after he created a discussion room titled “Why didn’t Russia’s queer revolution take off?” “This is very…

A Russian prosecutor on Tuesday called for Alexei Navalny to face a $13,000 fine in a defamation case, one of a series of legal proceedings the jailed Kremlin critic says are aimed at silencing him. President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal opponent was taken into police custody immediately after returning to Moscow in January from Germany,…

Russia is in talks with the United States on a prisoner swap involving Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine that Moscow jailed for spying, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing his Russian lawyer. Whelan’s attorneys previously suggested that prisoner exchange talks had stalled over the 2020 U.S. elections and the Trump administration’s reluctance to release a Russian…

Kazakhstan will be the first country in the world to locally produce Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine after a pharmaceutical company received government authorization to make the jab, the company said Tuesday.    The company, called the Karaganda Pharmaceutical Complex (KPC), “was granted certification” to produce the vaccine by Kazakhstan’s health ministry on Monday, KPC…

Russian women activists have received hundreds of death threats after their Valentine’s Day “chain of solidarity” for female victims of political repression, the Mediazona news website reported Tuesday. Around 300 participants formed human chains in central Moscow and St. Petersburg on Sunday following weeks of harsh police crackdowns at pro-Navalny protests. The event’s organizer, activist…

Russian academics are warning that lawmakers seek to curb their freedoms with a new law that would require state permission for public outreach, the weekly journal Nature reported Monday. Amendments to Russia’s education law advancing through the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, seek to stamp out “anti-Russian” influence in educational activities outside formal settings.…